


Footsteps and Fingerprints

by GloryBee



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-23
Updated: 2012-02-23
Packaged: 2017-10-31 15:04:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/345484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloryBee/pseuds/GloryBee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, people leave behind the echoes of footsteps, rippling through you. But sometimes they also leave gentle fingerprints, and colors on your soul the color of green eyes in the early morning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Footsteps and Fingerprints

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short little thing. Ain't she adorable.

Footsteps can be loud. They can be so deafening that you feel as though you will never be rid of the sound again. To other people, those footsteps will seem as quiet as a silent winter. But that person, that lovely, infuriating person, leaves footsteps behind that echo through you with more force than a hurricane. Those footsteps leave burning prints on your soul. They stay with you, never ending echoes in an endless rush of noise.

  
That’s the way Sam Winchester describes love, when he thinks Dean needs to hear it. And Dean so needs to hear it, obviously. Even if he is giving Sam a Look. Sam rolls his eyes when the radio is cranked up louder.

  
Dean doesn’t want to hear this. He knows exactly how loud footsteps can be. He knows that those echoes can tear at you and make you deaf to the world. And he knows why Sam is explaining this to him as if he is a small child.

  
Castiel’s footsteps hurt. They are so loud it’s like Dean’s head is about to crack open and every thought he’s ever had will simply tumble into oblivion. Those footsteps are louder than any rock concert Dean has ever stood in the middle of. They are louder than Niagara Falls. They are louder than a shrieking Banshee. Sometimes, the sound of all those echoes starts to make Dean feel sick. Sometimes Dean wants to rip out his own heart and cut off his own ears. Dean wants nothing more than to forget that the sound of those footsteps ever reached him. Then, even as he thinks it, he feels doubly sick at the thought of having never met Cas. Sure, he wouldn’t know what he was missing, but it seems impossible that he shouldn’t know something was missing. Dean is sure that if Cas didn’t exist he would find that old hole in his chest, the one that had appeared the day he watched Cas disappear into dark water.

  
It is with resignation that Dean decides he hates being in love just about as much as he loves Cas. That’s a lot of hate. It’s also a lot of love, but Dean ignores that. Dean has always been a glass half-empty kind of guy.

ECHO

A long time ago—although doubtfully in a galaxy far, far away (Cas has finally seen Star Wars)—Castiel had not really believed in love. His father gave it to him, and to everyone else, he knew. But Castiel has arrogantly believed that what humans called love was a mere mockery of what God gave unto them. Now, he wonders at how naïve he once was.

  
Sam had very carefully explained love to Cas, when he asked. It was a rainy day trapped in a moldy motel room, quite a long time ago. It hadn’t made any sense—something about footsteps.

  
Now, Cas watches Dean. He moves tiredly after a long day of driving. A long night hunting. Dean is fluid, even while his muscles creak and quiver in exhaustion. Cas can almost feel the searing pain of overworked limbs as Dean unpacks and hides and gets used to the sudden feeling of being home. It is still a foreign feeling, having a home to come back to. Bobby insisted, in his gruff manner, that they all needed “a place to roost.” Cas likes it. He is learning to cook. Sam keeps saying Cas will make some man a wonderful wife someday, which makes Dean stutter. Gender roles are still confusing.

  
Early in the morning Dean comes downstairs with the slight clumsiness usually reserved for the walking dead. Cas watches from his seat at the kitchen table with amusement. He has taken to reading the newspaper early in the morning, partly because he enjoys this stumbling display. Probably also maybe because Dean never bothers to put a shirt on. Dean’s sleepy green eyes seem to glow in the liquid morning sunlight. He rubs them as he pours a cup of coffee and takes a drink. He always burns his tongue, as if waiting for the coffee to cool is a sin. Every time Dean hisses in pain, like just now, Cas smiles. Somehow Dean’s burns always remind him of the handprint scarring the man’s otherwise perfect shoulder. Cas loves watching the flesh there ripple with every movement Dean makes, quietly taking in the mark he’d left there such a very long time ago.

  
Footsteps, no.

  
Every person you meet leaves a silent fingerprint. Just a touch, a blemish on your soul that stays through every hardship. Some of those fingertips turn slowly into smears of color, every touch bleeding together into a finger-painted streak. These touches shape you slowly, every color just slightly different. Sometimes a person comes along and touches your soul deeply, painting it with their fingertips until they leave your soul a canvas of one solid color. Sometimes they color your soul so fully that one day you suddenly realize it belongs to them. Sometimes you don’t want to give it to anyone else. It is with resignation that Cas decides that, could he view the color of his own soul, it would be the exact shade of Dean’s eyes smiling at him in the light of early morning.

ECHO

Sam likes to watch from the next room, knowing neither Dean nor Cas will notice his presence. The way they smile when they’re alone together, even after everything. The way Cas always makes enough coffee for five people because he knows Dean will drink nearly all of it. He likes the way sometimes he thinks Dean might kiss Cas, even if the thought itself kind of makes him want to run to the bathroom and hurl his guts up. Sam likes to watch Dean and Cas be together, even if they don’t know they’re together.  
Footsteps are loud, and Sam remembers certain footsteps with a strange mix of pleasure and pain that is oddly comforting. But these quiet moments in the early morning are Sam’s favorite. Those are the fingertips. The soft touches that will never leave you no matter how many years pass by. Sam remembers those fingertips fondly, and he knows Cas probably counts them every night before bed. He sort of likes the thought of that, but doesn’t reminisce on it.

  
From his room Sam can hear Dean wake up every morning. He always sets the alarm, even after a long and tiring hunt. He always rolls out of bed the second it goes off, as if that extra minute with Cas will make something happen. Sam knows he does it just for the silent time he will spend weaving around Cas in the kitchen. That’s why Sam always lays in bed for a while, or reads a book. He doesn’t want to ruin that, even if it’s getting the two blockheads nowhere fast.

  
Sometimes people leave behind echoing footsteps, and Dean can’t do anything quietly. Sometimes angels fall in love with hunters and walk loudly even when they could be silent. Sometimes hunters can gently drag their fingertips across a soul until they make it their own. Sometimes Sam thinks Dean and Cas need to be locked in a closet together until they actually get somewhere.

  
There’s always the panic room.


End file.
